by Lexi Blake
“No,” he replied because he would never lie to her again. “I don’t think Dr. McDonald was at all concerned with cures. She wanted us like this. What I might find is research that could lead to a cure, or I hope I can find files on us.”
“She was very detail oriented,” Robert said, his tone solemn. “She would have known where each subject came from and have a comprehensive history on each. If we’ve got family, their information might be in that lab.”
“And if we know more about the therapies and drugs she used on us, we might be able to figure out a way to bring back more of our memories,” Tucker explained. “We’ve all started having flashes. I think she couldn’t completely eradicate that part of the brain without losing more than she wanted to. She needed her subjects to remember things like how to speak a language, how to do daily things. I think she severed connections. But that doesn’t mean the memories aren’t still there.”
“And you think someone else might try to get this information.” It wasn’t a question. River stared up at him with somber eyes. “They could start the program again.”
“They could make more of me.” And that would be a shame. That would be dangerous. He’d been dangerous, and the thought of another hundred men like him out in the world kept him awake at night.
Her eyes closed briefly but when she opened them, he could see the will there. “Then we should find this place. But I’m serious, Jax. This is not about you and me.”
“If I am what you say I am, if I was using you, then you have nothing to worry about. I’ve got what I want. I have you guiding me. I don’t need anything else from you.” It occurred to him that Tag was right. She was here. She’d come back, and it hadn’t all been about fighting for what was right. She wasn’t willing to risk her life merely because she was trying to save some unknown generation of people who might or might not come up against Dr. McDonald’s vision.
She’d come for him. She’d come because she’d needed a reason.
He had no doubt that she would keep her distance, protect her heart, but deep down she couldn’t let him risk his life alone.
“And if you’re not what I think you are?” She finally met his eyes and he could see the trepidation there.
“If I love you, if I did everything I did because I wanted you and nothing else, then you should go home and let me go alone because I’ll try my hardest to win you back. I’ll do it because my life has been short and you’re the first thing that made me want to live. You are the sun in the sky, River. If I’m that man, you’re in trouble.” He had to warn her. It would be smarter to simply agree with everything she said, but he wasn’t doing that to her. Of course, she had given him an option. “But then you know who I am so you should be safe enough.”
She went still and he worried he’d pushed her too far, but she took a long breath, as though coming to a decision. “I do know who you are and I know what I’m doing. Let’s go. We’re wasting daylight.”
She took Buster from him and gave the pup a cuddle, whispering to him that she would be back and he shouldn’t mess up Ty’s place too badly. She kissed the top of his furry head and passed him to the man who would watch over him while they were gone.
And then she walked off, following the path that would lead them into the woods.
His own personal yellow brick road.
He nodded to Ezra and his friends and followed.
It was time to see if he could find his way home.
Chapter Sixteen
She was making a terrible mistake.
River knew it the minute he’d looked her in the eyes.
I’ll do it because my life has been short and you’re the first thing that made me want to live. You are the sun in the sky, River. If I’m that man, you’re in trouble.
She sat in front of the small fire she’d made, his words echoing in her head. He’d looked so open in that moment it had been hard to believe he was lying.
But she wanted him to be lying. If he was lying she didn’t have to face the fact that maybe what he’d told her had been false, but what he’d felt had been true. She would have to decide if she was brave enough to risk her soul again. But that wasn’t all. She wanted them all to be lying to her because what Theo Taggart had gone through had been nothing less than pure hell on earth. The idea that Jax had been through something similar made her heart twist.
She didn’t want to feel for him. She wanted to be numb again because when she was numb she didn’t feel pain.
And you don’t feel joy, baby girl. You don’t get one without the other, but life means nothing without joy. It means nothing without pain. I wouldn’t take back loving your mother for anything. She’s gone now, but loving her was the joy of my life and that’s worth the pain.
She shoved away her father’s words. It was the place, that was all. This had been one of her dad’s favorite camping spots because it was off the beaten path. He’d brought her here many times. When he wasn’t working, he would take her out in the woods and they would spend weeks camping and studying nature and simply existing in what he called the world’s best hotel. That was why she felt restless. There were ghosts here.
“Are you all right?” Jax sat across from her.
She was far from all right. They’d hiked in silence all afternoon and well into the evening, him following behind her. He moved more quietly than she would have expected for such a large man. Sometimes she’d looked back to make sure he was still there and every single time she’d caught him staring at her with a sad look on his face.
The path Solo had chosen to get them out under cover had included a couple of decent climbs. Nothing that would require climbing gear, but it had been hard physical work. Jax had been good at it, his body moving with ease, hands knowing where to grip to haul himself up. He’d done this before. That was another lie.
Or he didn’t remember and this was one of those muscle memory things Nell had talked about.
When they’d reached the campsite, he’d been helpful and quick to learn. He’d had both tents up before she could make the fire. They’d eaten MREs while talking about innocuous subjects like how she would train Buster and how he was going to buy Tucker a plastic blow-up doll to love.
But now she couldn’t escape the questions she really wanted to ask but wasn’t going to. Nope. She was treating him like any other client. She wouldn’t ask Joe from Wisconsin personal questions. Of course, Joe from Wisconsin usually brought along his Jane or his kids or his friends, and they would bear the burden of campfire talk.
“How much time do you remember?” The question came out before she could think to hold it in. She didn’t need to know more about him. She needed to do her duty so she could sleep better at night knowing she’d helped.
After she’d read Theo’s account of his captivity and torture, she’d known she would guide Jax to The Ranch. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she didn’t try to help.
Because that’s life, baby girl. It’s tough, and no one person can save the world. There’s so much bad out there that it’s overwhelming. It’s easy to throw up your hands and give in. But faith—real faith—is knowing you can’t save it and still trying any way. If we all would just try, maybe the world would be a better place.
She wished she would stop hearing her father’s voice.
“Time is hard for me. I think I’ve been alive for about three years. I guess the better term would be aware.”
The words gutted her and yet Jax said them without emotion. “You don’t know for sure?”
He sat back against the log he’d dragged up to their makeshift campsite. “Sometimes it seems like I was born a few days ago but other times it feels like I spent decades there with her. With Dr. McDonald. Sorry, I have to remind myself not to call her Mother.”
That was what Theo had said. Hope McDonald had twisted the idea of maternal love. She was a psychopath who hadn’t known how to love at all.
Jax stared at the fire as he continued. “I remember waking
up and not understanding where I was. There was this godawful bright light and the room I was in was pure white. She was there. She seemed kind at first. I was sick from the drugs and she helped me. Sasha was there, too. I think he was the first of us. Well, the first one who survived. I don’t know about Robert. He was with the other team. They moved around more than we did.”
Theo and Robert and a man named Victor had been another “team,” one McDonald moved around South America and Asia. They’d been forced to commit crimes to fuel her business, to stay alive.
“Didn’t you ask yourself where your family was?” River asked. She didn’t understand completely. It was hard to comprehend what they’d been through.
“I didn’t remember whether I had a family or not. The doctor told me I’d been in an accident and that Sasha was my brother. He was nice to me in the beginning. We only had each other and Dante until she brought in Tucker and a guy named George. There were others, but I was close to Tucker and George.”
“But not Sasha and Dante?”
He hesitated, as if trying to figure out how to reply. “I was at first, but then she started the training.”
Did she even want to know this? It would be better to leave the knowledge as academic, mere words on a page. If she listened to Jax’s story, it would be real, visceral. If she listened to him, she would empathize with him.
“Did you ever come here with your dad?”
She’d taken too long, been quiet and given him a chance to turn the tide of the conversation. “I want to hear about the training.”
He brought his eyes up. They glowed in the light of the fire. The shadows made the planes of his face seem even more stark and masculine than usual. “I would rather hear about your father. The training wasn’t pleasant.”
“Why did the training hurt your relationship with Sasha and Dante?” If she started talking about her dad she might lose it. She needed to find a way to stay centered. She’d thought about climbing into the tent she’d bought, but it was still early and she worried she would lie in there thinking about the fact that it was big enough for two, and Jax was huddled in Henry’s old tent.
He was silent for a moment and his eyes strayed back to the fire. “The training came in different forms. She would pit us against each other. She had handlers. That’s what she called them. They were guards meant to keep us in line. At first the training was the same thing you would find in a gym. We would work out for hours every day. Then it turned into a competition. She would put us on the treadmill and whoever fell off first lost.”
“Fell off?”
“Oh, yes, if you stepped off the treadmill, you were beaten physically. If you fell off, you were beaten, but at least you got to eat that night. I remember several times when one of us would urinate on the treadmill because we knew if we stopped for a break she would remind us that she was in control and that we would do Mother’s will. I have a couple of scars from passing out and banging around on the thing. She would sit and watch us for hours, taking notes. They controlled the machines and we would try to keep up.”
Her heart threatened to crack. “You competed against Dante and Sasha?”
“Often,” he allowed. “I would beat them and they didn’t handle it well. And then there was the ring. When there were enough of us, she would make us compete to see who would be the alpha for the week. The alpha got the best food, the choicest place to sleep, sometimes women. Theo’s group was more advanced than we were, or perhaps McDonald simply preferred them. She trained them differently from what Robert’s said. I think they were her elite soldiers. We were her pack of trained dogs. That’s what she wanted. A pack of loyal dogs to do her bidding.”
“You’re not a dog, Jax.”
His lips turned up slightly. “I don’t think that it’s so bad to be a dog. I know Buster’s pretty happy. Like all things in life it depends on who takes care of you, on who teaches and cares for you.” The smile faded. “We were trained on weapons once she decided we were sufficiently loyal. I was a problem child. I required an enormous amount of correction. Sometimes she would have me beaten when I hadn’t even done anything wrong. She told me I was the stupidest of her sons and I lived on her sufferance. Sometimes I’m almost sure she hated me.”
She gasped as she realized where the scars on his back had come from. Somehow she’d convinced herself he’d been in a terrible accident. It had been easier to think that it had happened at once, and then he’d been in a hospital with drugs to numb his pain. But his scars came from a thousand cuts, dealt out over time until he likely couldn’t recall a day without pain.
Something was opening inside her and it threatened to take over. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t let herself be ripped open by his pain.
“You survived,” she said carefully, tamping down the emotions roiling through her. “You were lucky.”
“I was very lucky,” he agreed. “She picked the wrong man to get obsessed with. If she hadn’t come after Theo Taggart, I wouldn’t be here. His bad luck was my salvation because Big Tag wasn’t going to stop until he got his brother back. I won’t even go into Erin Taggart. She scares me a little. But that day…she would be offended, I’m sure, but that day when Theo’s family came for him, she was an angel. A foul-mouthed angel who talks to her gun a lot, but an angel.”
She wanted to get him away from the brutal times, but she still had some questions. “You don’t remember girlfriends?”
A sly smile crossed his face. “Are you asking if I remember sex?”
Heat flashed through her system and she wasn’t sure if it was pure embarrassment. There was some arousal in there, too, since he’d said the word sex and in her mind that word had a definition. Jax Seaborne was sex to her. “I was curious. You said they would bring in women. I think Tucker mentioned hookers. I thought it was weird at the time, but now it makes sense.”
“Oh, sweetheart, those were hookers brought in by Big Tag,” he corrected. “They were nice women. They were kind to us. The women McDonald would bring in were almost always murdered as a way to keep us in line. I never had sex at the facility. Even before I realized what was happening, I couldn’t touch anyone in there.”
River stood up. She couldn’t breathe. He had to be lying to her. He had to be. “They killed women?”
“Not all of them, but occasionally after the alpha of the week would sleep with his prize, he would wake up to a dead body and be told he’d killed her in the night. It happened to George and he didn’t speak or eat for two weeks. He believed them. He believed he killed that woman. Now we know it was the handlers who did it. We were given drugs to make us sleep through anything, and that was when they would sneak in. It was a way to remind us not to get too close to anyone from the outside. Not that we knew anyone from the outside.” Jax considered her for a moment as she paced in front of the fire. “This bothers you.”
“Of course, it does. I’m human.”
“I’ve known plenty of humans who didn’t care.”
Because the only people he’d known were evil doctors and minions and men who were desperate to survive.
“River,” he said quietly, “I’m lying. It didn’t happen, sweetheart. It’s a well-crafted fiction. You were right. It was all a way to manipulate you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
She stared at him for a moment. “You’re lying now. Why?”
“Because I just realized I don’t want to make the world any worse for you. There are some things it’s better not to know. There are some things that should be hidden. I’ve learned a few truths about the world in the last few days. Pain is relative. My pain can’t be compared to yours. Pain is real to the person feeling it. It shouldn’t be held up like it’s a contest.”
Oh, but he would win. “Jax, what you went through was horrific.”
“And I’m sure losing your father was horrific, too. At the end it’s all nothing but pain unless we learn something from it. I wish I’d been honest with you. I wish I’d met you that first nig
ht and told you that I don’t remember ever being with another woman, that in all the ways that count, I was a virgin until you. I wish I’d given you that.”
Tears pulsed behind her eyes. God, what kind of a person was she? She hadn’t cried at her own father’s funeral but here she was, wild emotion threatening to spill over. She turned and strode away, needing to breathe. It was too much. Far, far too much.
She leaned against a big pine tree, the fire behind her, Jax behind her.
The air held the promise of snow to come in a few weeks. The rains they’d had would soon turn powdery and white. It already capped the mountaintops and the blanket would soon flow all around her. In a few weeks, Ty would go part time and he would stay at the lodge. She would have to decide what to do with the rest of her life.
Where would Jax be? On the run? Alone?
She’d been his first lover. His only lover. Who the hell was this man? Could she believe him?
She heard the quiet crunch of boots against the forest floor. “I want to be alone, Jax.”
“I won’t say a word,” he promised. “But I have to watch over you. I won’t ever bother you again, but you should know I’ll always be there for you. If you ever need me all you have to do is call. We change phones a lot out of necessity, but I’ll keep the one you have the number to. I’ll have it with me and I promise I’ll always have it charged and I’ll answer it.”
I’ll always be there. I won’t let you down, baby girl. You’re the most important person in the world to me.
Her father had said those words to her and he’d been standing in almost the same spot where Jax was. She remembered it like it was yesterday. It had been right after her mother had died. After the funeral, her father had packed them up and they’d hiked until she couldn’t walk anymore. She’d fallen to the forest floor, exhausted. He’d built a fire and they’d looked down on the valley below.
That’s Bliss, he’d said to her that night. It looks peaceful from up here. It looks like nothing bad ever happened, but even Bliss has its troubles. Wouldn’t know joy without pain. Wouldn’t be Bliss without sorrow. The key to living is to accept the pain for what it is—a reminder. Yeah, your momma is gone, but that doesn’t mean we stop living. She’s up there waiting and watching. Death is nothing but a reminder to live, to love while we can.